Faith at Work

“We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not “what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “Can we induce people to buy them?” but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?”

- Dorothy Sayers, from Why Work?

Longing for Home

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

- C.S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold)

Good Work & Good Works

“‘Good Works’ in the plural is an expression much more familiar to modern Christendom than ‘good work.’ Good works are chiefly almsgiving or ‘helping’ in the parish. They are quite separate from one’s ‘work.’ And good works need not be good work, as anyone can see by inspecting some of the objects made to be sold at bazaars for charitable purposes. This is not according to our example. When our Lord provided a poor wedding party with an extra glass of wine all around, he was doing good works. But also good work; it was a wine really worth drinking. Nor is the neglect of goodness in our ‘work,’ our job, according to precept. The apostle says everyone must not only work but work to produce what is ‘good.’”

- C.S. Lewis, Good Work & Good Works

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